Business Hall inductee: Mark Heitz

Am. Investors Life exec built success on relationships

After years of helping others save for retirement with American Investors Life, AmerUs and Aviva, Mark Heitz, who retired last December as president of sales and distributions for Aviva USA, is enjoying the fruits of his labor.

MARK HEITZ

Place of birth: Pittsburg

Years in Topeka: 35

Claim to fame: Helped grow a $100-million retirement savings company to a $40 billion organization in 25 years

Family: Wife, Lisa; daughter, Kara

Key to success: “Having the right strategy and goals is important, but the most important aspect is that you have to find the right people to reach those goals and implement that strategy.”

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When Mark Heitz came on as president of Topeka-based American Investors Life in 1986, the privately held retirement savings company had about $100 million in assets.

Today, it boasts annuity assets totaling more than $40 billion as part of the sixth largest insurance company in the world — European-based Aviva PLC.

Several factors had to align for the company to get to that point. Good employees. Reliable marketing agents. Solid investments. Focused strategies.

But really, the company’s success — and Heitz’s role in it — can be summed up in a word: Relationships.

Relationships helped the company weather the early ’90s, when the high-yield bond market collapsed. They assisted in the attraction and retention of employees and customers and even helped Heitz get his start at the company. The strong relationships Heitz developed and required of his employees set the company apart — ultimately leading to its acquisition by Aviva.

Though Heitz implemented several strategies to position the company for success before his retirement in December — as president of sales and distributions for Aviva USA — those relationships forever will be his legacy.

“The relationships that he has developed over the past 25 years with American Investors Life and its successor companies are just really, really strong,” said Mike Miller, whom Heitz hired 21 years ago. And Miller would know — he took over Heitz’s job this year as president of sales and distribution of Aviva USA.

MODELS OF SUCCESS

Heitz had several unique methods of bringing about success.

The first was its narrow focus on premium deferred annuities. It’s success in that area led to the merger with AmerUs, a life insurance company, in 1997. But even then, the company kept its focus: The two operations remained separate, with Heitz overseeing annuities.

During the next nine years, AmerUs grew from $3 billion to more than $20 billion in assets — helped along both by cross-selling opportunities as well as the prestige that comes with being a larger firm.

“As a bigger company, customers were more comfortable with putting more saving dollars with us,” Heitz said.

He also developed the company’s unique distribution model, what they called “doing more with less.”

Unlike most insurance companies, which try to bring on as many distribution partners and agents possible, Heitz wanted his company to focus on forming deeper bonds with fewer agents. Agents, he said, are key to bringing on customers, so it’s just as important for them to know what the company offers as it is for them to understand the company’s the character.

That model separated AmerUs from other insurance U.S. companies when Aviva started looking to expand in the American market, he said.

When Aviva purchased AmerUs in 2006 for $2.9 billion, the company gave Heitz one direction: Double production. And as president and sales of distribution for the newly purchased company, Heitz did that and more.

In just five years, the company grew from $20 billion in assets and $800 million in collected life premiums to $40 billion in assets and $1.5 billion in premiums.

Although focus and relationship-building was key to that success as well, Heitz said, the main factor was, and always has been, the quality of employees he’s been able to attract.

“It’s very important that you have the right people within the company,” he said. “People who understand the problems but also understand and were committed to solving those problems.”

Heitz described “the right people” as honest, hardworking, educated people who were focused and dedicated to the mission of the company. Good people also had good personalities and a team mindset, he said.

Those are fairly high and specific standards, he said, but he grew to expect them of his employees because of the workforce available in the Topeka community — a pool, he said, that has been engrained with the “Midwest work ethic.”

“That really has been the key factor in the success of this company, the people we’ve been able to attract,” he said. “And that’s because we’re in Topeka.”

The immense value Heitz placed on relationships is easily perceived by what he considers to be his biggest accomplishment in his 25-year tenure: The people the company helped.

“We helped make out customers more successful, we helped make our agents and key distribution partners more successful, and we helped make our employees more successful,” he said. “That’s a great thing to be able to be a part of.”

RETIREMENT

After years of helping others save for retirement, Heitz is enjoying the fruits of his labor — literally. He’s been a big customer for the company for decades. Heitz now spends most of his time on the pristine golf courses and sandy beaches of Miramar Beach, Fla. — deepening one of the few relationships that has lasted longer than this love affair with insurance: His nearly 40-year marriage to Lisa.

Heitz, 59, hasn’t fully retired yet. He’s still doing consulting work and keeping in touch with the old gang. But even without that, Heitz never will be completely gone from Aviva, whether he knows it or not.

“The relationships he formed will continue for a long, long time even after his retirement,” Miller said. “He’s a pretty amazing guy.”